Michael Jackson!

I recently became rekindled my obsession for  with Michael Jackson's "She's Out of My Life" because of the emotion that Michael is able to evoke just by his voice alone. I believe the simplicity of the song assists in setting the whole atmosphere of empathy that he portray and soooo I decided that it would me feel SO much better if I can manage to sing his song with accompaniment before I get tired of the song. I have no idea when that will be but hopefully before Christmas.

International Day

The concert actually went quite well ...besides the order that the contestants were put in. The stage was elongated so that the drums as well as the piano could fit on it and it actually looked pretty decent. This year, people could see the stage much more clearly as the stage was placed right in the centre of the gym so that the chairs were placed in a semi-circle shape around the stage. The practices also went smoothly except for when I had to go around looking for contestants that had forgotten their scheduled time.
Apart from that, our performance was pretty decent. I was really nervous and my hand was more shakier than my voice but it felt good performing. It is definitely something I would not mind doing again.
Videos will follow very soon ;)

Update

I apologise in advance for the long post that is about to follow. Unfortunately I have not had any access to the internet for a while.

Dance Club
We have been a little low on memebers lately so last week,we decided to have a special 'Salsa Week' where we would learn a new dance genre that is completely different from our usual dance routines. We advertised this via flyers in the school registers and announcements as well.  It took us about 2 weeks to learn the routine which is being done to the song "Yo No Se Manana" (sp) by Enrique Iglesias. I actually found the routine quite challenging as it involved a lot of quick,fast and smooth movements. Most of which I am not capable of. Not to mention the hip movement involved :/
Either way it was definitely a fun experience.
Today we had the club and only had 2 members join us. It was quite lower than we expected but we went ahead with it anyways as we did not want to disappoint those that had attended.
We only managed to teach half of the dance because we ran out of time but it was fun! I actually enjoyed teaching and demonstrating the dance. It was agreed upon that the Salsa week will be pushed into the week when we return to school after the half-term. Other than that...I hope that more people will be able to join :)

International Day- Concert

Wow. Well the progress with international day has been quite drastic. I shall start with the simpler things i.e my performance. We had a lot of difficulty finding a song that I could sing to and David could beatbox to. We tried "Shake It Out" by Florence and the Machine then we tried "I believe" by Yolanda Adams and they were both ridiculously challenging to adapt to. Thennnn I chose "Breaking the Law" by Emeli Sande and we asked Ho Geon to play the guitar. So far, to the few that have heard us,we sound quite decent. I feel as though I need to strengthen my voice though as well as project it more because of the long note that comes along in the chorus. Hopefully this won;t be a problem when we perform tomorrow.
Now, the concert's organisation itself involved finding each and every contestant and asking what they were doing,with who and what they would need to perform. I was quite pleased with the job of assisting in organising the concert as I have my experience from the Talent Show in June which I believe was quite successful . This academic year however, I had to collaborate with Mr. Russell seeing as it is the schools's tradition to have the music teacher organise the concert on internaitonal day.This was difficult as Mr. Russell only comes to school On Mondays and Tuesdays. This was especially frustrating today when we had to organise the seating arrangments and the stage set-up without him being there even though he evidently had a few suggestions to be made. I shall not get into detail about this but we decided it would be safer if we just waited for him to come in tomorrow but in the meantime, we tried to fix a few things, such as the lack of space for the sound assistants and performers on the stage and dancers that will be dancing of the stage. We fixed this,sort of, by moving the stage forward and adding extra squares to make it bigger but anywhoooo...we also had to deal with the decorations. Mr. Russell asked me to make a few flyers to ask students to bring in the flags of their country. So I put some in the registers and on the notice boards asking for the flags to be in by today (Thursday) and only like..4 people gave them in so we all split up and made announcements in the class to ensure that more flags would be brought in tomorrow.
Alyona and Polina stayed behind after school and hung up the flags in the gym and in the hall and we are all very grateful to them for that :)
Other than that...all we can do now it twiddle our thumbs and wait for tomorrow.
Bye.

International Day Concert

At this point,we've managed to get about 9 people to sign up for the concert excluding those that have signed up with Mr. Russell which is a great improvement compared to having 4 last week :) 

We decided that since the sign ups were quite slow,we would have to go around to the classes and make announcements in order to ensure that people were informed about it as opposed to just seeing it on one of the notice boards that were already filled with other announcements.

We have already allocated a group of people  (Thanks to Natasha) that will be arranging the hall and carrying the chairs and the piano into the gym.

One of the problems that we have already encountered is that Ms. Platt does not have enough supplies for the decorations such as making flags and whatnot. So we've decided to ask one of pur talented year 13s to help with that as well as find as many students that can actually bring in their countries' flags so that we could use those as well.

Other than that...everything seems to be going according to plan.

Basketball

Basketball this week, proved to be quite interesting. This week I was placed as a forward as opposed to being placed in the back last week. Unfortunately,since Mr Giddens and Mr Gray left,it seems as though some of the regular members may have forgotten the structure that we were used to last year. In addition to this, I definately tried to shoot more even though I missed all of my attempted shots. Next week,I plan on being more assertive and yelling whenever I'm free. I also need to make myself more available...for being passed to.
This of course,will involve a lot more movement around the court as well as the improvememnt of my lay-ups.
And I will definiately take pictures and videos next time.

New Term Plan

This term,we may be occupied with all our university applications so for now I will try and keep things simple. The clubs I will be partaking in are as follows:

1) Dance Club: Our first session in dance club will be this Thursday. We will be discussing how to film and record our dance medley that we completed last term

2)Basketball : First session this Wednesday. This term I would like to focus on my lay-ups as I never shoot using this method at all :/

3) (Tennis) : this has not been confirmed yet however,it is most definitely something that I will pursue by the end of this month..hopefully.

At the moment,we are organising the concert that follows on every afternoon of international day :D 

I was asked to assist seeing as I organised the talent show at the end of the school year in July. I will also be participating in the talent show with David and Francesco,but that is not final as well :/ I'm sure that by the end of the week everything will be confirmed though. :)

 

Old Age home follow-up

I apologise for the late post but I am finally able to post pictures about my visit to the old-age home.
My sister and I spent the night baking about 98 cupcakes...the other two may have disappeared into our stomachs,I don't know how. We used cake mix as well as brownie mix to make the muffins and we made the icing as well! It was quite tiring though :/
At the old age home,we arranged the cupcakes onto plates along with the other snacks that others had brought and we served it to the residents after the small "concert" that was made for them.
Overall,it was a really interesting experience. Not to mention that I felt so much more happier after I left because I was able to contribute to their happiness :P
Next time,I'll be sure to get enough time to actually speak more to the residents as this time, we stayed quite late and the residents had to rush to their bungalows after the concert as there had been an incident that required them to now have a curfew to be home. :/
Hopefully,next year we'll visit more often as well as make more cupcakes! :)